Soy Cuba (Ich bin Kuba)

A film like no other: cinema as intoxication, excess, ecstasy. Soon after the victory of the Cuban revolution, Mikhail Kalatozov and cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky were invited to realise a co-production with the new brother state. The shooting of this anthology of stories from the revolutionary struggle against the Batista regime began shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the film was completed at a time when the two countries had already become very estranged - SOY CUBA disappeared into the freezer for decades. Yet Kalatozov and Urusevskij have created nothing less than a truly revolutionary work: cinema is reinvented in every image, every cut, every plan sequence, every gesture, every shadow, every ray of light, every word and every sound - here the screen is ablaze, here the auditorium, the earth and the universe shake. (Olaf Möller)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum